Last Update: November 23, 2023
Planned Check-In: W1 2024
This page contains concrete, clear, measurable steps that the lab is implementing to break down discrimination in academia and psychological research. It is publicly viewable, and based on the larger goals made in our Our Long-Term Goals for Changing Exclusionary Academic Culture.
Most of the time, these initiatives are a product of targeted lab meetings, but if you have comments or suggestions for other ones even outside the regular lab meeting schedule, please let somebody in the lab know right away, or comment on this page. When thinking about ideas for initiatives we can take, consider them at various levels: at the level of our lab culture, at recruitment of students and staff, at subject recruitment, at the level of the Department of Psychology, and at academia as a whole. While we have more power to do more at the level of the lab, brainstorming ideas that can be taken to other levels is crucially important and welcomed. Whenever possible, these initiatives should have clear success/failure conditions so that they can be reliably reviewed and updated. Accountability and transparency are key.
If you would like to make an anonymous suggestion for any improvements to lab policies or structures, you can use our anonymous suggestion form here: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6R52wbC2jm5WRVk
List of Current Lab Initiatives
- Have BIPOC and graduate/post-doc speakers invited to come visit us for lab meetings to give research talks: we can give more visibility by inviting more external speakers, especially when COVID makes Zoom meetings easier.
- CogDev Coordinator: make a new page for lab meetings that has a list of typical events and includes one annual BIPOC-list speaker invited
- Advertising more publicly once self-nominations are made
- Revisit this and make sure that we have at least one per semester for a 12 month period (Success if done by April 15th, 2024)
- Spend more time reading about intersectional issues in psychology
- Revisit this and make sure that we have at least one reading per semester for a 12 month period (Success if done by April 15th, 2024)
- To connect our work with the community, begin creating public versions of our published papers: it helps our work get easily communicated, teaches us to communicate better, and bypasses copyright issues.
- In early-to-mid 2024, review some of the initial write-up/visualizations
- Consider creating template for visualization (maybe hire somebody external?)
- Once review is done, re-evaluate plan for future ones (standardized vs. creative)
- What about doing videos instead of write-ups (easier to make, broader, uses existing platforms EDRG is building)?
- Build in short checking-in on some of these initiatives in smaller-scale admin meetings once a month. Evaluate for how we are doing on this by January 1st, 2024.
- Look at our RA recruitment forms with fresh eyes and make sure we are not implicitly communicating that the “ideal” student is narrower than we intend to (though, e.g., asking for GPA).
- Suggestions for Department-wide Initiatives:
Plan/Suggestion for Future Initiatives to be Discussed
- Lab Discussion on Diversity in Subject Recruitment: we recognize this to be in need of a broader conversation than the time we had today. Consider assigning a reading on the topic (one has been suggested by Carolyn) in either July or September lab meeting. Update this on next follow-up.
- Should we promote our work more in the media? How do we find the balance between usefulness and shameless self-promotion for own gain?